Entering Thursday, Pittsburgh Steelers OLB Nick Herbig led the team with 4.5 sacks, and there’s a good argument to be had that he’d been the best player on the Steelers defense. And yet, on Thursday Night Football against the Cincinnati Bengals, where the Steelers struggled to get pressure, Herbig played just 27 snaps, significantly below Alex Highsmith’s 53 snaps. That’s too low.
I can understand some of the reasoning. It’s a short week. Herbig had played a lot on Sunday, and the team might not want to wear him down too early. The Steelers also got off to a bad start against the run, and Alex Highsmith has been a better run defender. But I just don’t really get the justification for having him play 26 fewer snaps than Highsmith.
For one, Highsmith is coming off an ankle injury, which he returned from in Week 6. Highsmith probably could’ve used the rest more than the younger and healthier Herbig, and Herbig has just been so dynamic as a pass rusher this year that he needs to be playing more.
Mike Tomlin said ahead of Thursday’s game that finding snaps for Herbig was a “good problem to have.” It doesn’t sound like it’s a problem they’ve fully solved yet, though. The Steelers had Herbig on the field with Highsmith and Watt in their Bronco package four times on Thursday, per Alex Kozora’s charting. Two of those plays led to incompletions, while two of them led to gains of 10+ yards through the air. But the Steelers went away from it for a large part of the game, and it’s something I’d like to see them experiment with more.
Against the Bengals, it’s understandable that the Steelers may have wanted more coverage guys on the field, and Joe Flacco did get rid of the ball quickly. But Herbig is Pittsburgh’s best pass rusher when it comes to getting to the quarterback quickly and disrupting his rhythm. It would’ve been nice to see the Steelers use him more and try to combat Flacco. He had two quarterback hits in his 20 pass rush snaps, while Highsmith didn’t have any in 32 pass rush snaps, per PFF.
We’ll see if things change going forward, and I don’t want to discount Highsmith, either. He’s a great pass-rusher in his own right. Still, with how good Herbig has been playing, the team needs to find a way to put him on the field for more than 27 snaps, especially when the pass-rush is struggling to get home.
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